Cyberspace and the Emerging Chinese Religious Landscape – Preliminary Observations

It is still too early to assess the full impact of the Internet on China’s rapidly evolving religious landscape. The effectiveness of Falun Gong’s cyber-militancy has, however, underscored the role new information technologies are playing in the shifting relations of power between a classic repressive state apparatus and deterritorialized religious or sectarian movements. While the impact of the development of the Internet and other information technologies on the economy and politics of the Chinese world has been amply commented upon, to my knowledge no in-depth research has yet been conducted on how the Internet is changing the form of religion in China. And yet, religious changes represent an important dimension of the cultural recomposition and transformation of the Chinese-speaking world. This chapter proposes some initial hypotheses and observations on these issues, a preliminary report on what will, I hope, become a full-fledged study on the expansion of religion in Chinese cyberspace and its impact on religious practices, communities, and state-religion relations in contemporary China. I will begin with some general considerations on the relationship between information technology and religion; briefly present the types of religious information available on the Chinese Internet; and consider the cases of Daoism and of Falun Gong. In these case studies, we will see how, as a “virtual panopticon” closely monitored by the state while at the same time a space allowing unprecedented freedom of expression and access to information, the Internet is becoming a new zone of tension in the age-old agonistic relationship between religion and state in China. I began this study with three hypotheses. It was assumed that new information technologies would have three effects on the Chinese religious landscape: (1) the emergence of a new space for religious expression, characterized by an autonomous quest for meaning rather than collective rituals; (2) a further undermining of orthodoxies accompanied by the emergence of new centers of religious influence; (3) greater integration of Chinese communities on the mainland and overseas, as well as between Chinese and non-Chinese communities. So far, while the data seems to support the first two hypotheses, the third needs to be reformulated: a clear difference appears between online religion in mainland China and Hong Kong-Taiwan, with, surprisingly, the potentialities of the Web being more fully exploited on the mainland than in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This discrepancy will be described and explained in our case study of Daoism.postprin

Cross-Cultural Currents in the Work of Yu-Cheng Chuang: An Examination of the Chinese Principle of Jingjie and Western Idea of the Picturesque as Parallel Influences on Site-Specificity in Land Art

This combined studio practice/text thesis analyses links among the Chinese concept of jingjie, the archetypal patterns of sacred places, the picturesque movement in European aesthetics, and site-specificity in 1960s Land Art. In addition to examining site-specificity and the theoretical aspects of my studio practice, I explore the relationship between my ethnicity and my work in the context of contemporary Chinese and Taiwanese art environments. Guided by the principle that "practice and theory inform each other," I restate the significance of jingjie in contemporary art, especially its connection with the physical and psychological patterns found in archetypal "sacred places." Jingjie was fundamental to the spatial fluidity found in Chinese landscape arts, especially garden design. After demonstrating how Chinese gardens influenced English landscape garden principles and the 18th-century European picturesque movement, I argue that similar East-West connections served as direct and indirect influences on the site-specific work of middle and late 20th-century Land Art artists. I then describe how picturesque depictions of the relationship between man and nature influenced 19th-century landscape architecture in North America and 20th-century Land Art throughout the West. Finally, jingjie and Chinese gardens are used to explore archetypal sacred place patterns and their influences on the Western tradition of the picturesque. These parallel East-West connections served as the foundation for later interest in site-specificity, and were essential in establishing a historical context for understanding cross-cultural currents and their influences on Land Art artists. Using jingjie as my focus, I examine aspects of contemporary art that are not usually addressed by art critics, and reconsider the relevance of the Western picturesque tradition through a reciprocal model of cultural influences

Choreographing and Reinventing Chinese Diasporic Identities - An East-West Collaboration

In demonstrating Eastern- and Western-based Chinese diasporic dances as equally critical and question-provoking in Chinese identity reconstructions, this research compares choreographic implications in the Hong Kong-Taiwan and Toronto-Vancouver dance milieus of recent decades (1990s 2010s). An auto-ethnographic study of Yuri Ngs (Hong Kong) and Lin Hwai-mins (Taiwan) works versus my own (Toronto) and Wen Wei Wangs (Vancouver), it probes identities choreographed in place-constituted third spaces between Chinese selves and Euro-American Others. I suggest that these identities perpetrate hybrid movements and aesthetics of geo-cultural-political distinctness from the Chinese ancestral land ones manifesting ultimate glocalization intersecting global political economies and local cultural-creative experiences. Echoing the diasporic habitats cultural and socio-historical specificities, they are constantly (re) appropriated and reinvented via translation, interpretation, negotiation, and integration of East-West cultural-artistic and socio-political ingredients. The event unfolds such identities placial uniqueness that indicates the same Chinese roots yet divergent diasporic routes. In reviewing Ngs balletic and contemporary photo-choreographic productions of post-British colonial Hong Kong-ness alongside Lins repertories of Chinese traditional, Taiwan indigenous, American modern and Other artistic impacts noting Taiwanese-ness, the study unearths cultural roots as the core source of Chinese identity rebuilding from East Asian displacements. It traces an ingrained third space between Chinese historic-social values, Western cultural elements, and Other performing artistries of Hong Kong and Taiwanese belongings. Juxtaposing my Chinese traditional-based and transcultural Toronto dance projects with Wangs Vancouver balletic-contemporary fusions of Chinese iconicity, Chinese-Canadian identities marked by a hyphenated (third/in-between) space are associated as varying North American self-generated routes of social and artistic possibilities in a Canadian mosaic-cosmopolitical setting the persistent state of Canadian becoming. My conclusion resolves the examined choreographic cases as continually developed through third-space instigated East-West cultural-political crossings plus interpenetrative local creativities and global receptivity. Of gains or losses, struggles or rebirths, the cases of placial-temporal significations elicit multiple questions on Chinese diasporic cultural infusions, social sustenance, artistic integrity, and identity representations amid East-West negotiations my experiential reflection on the dance role and potency in the reimagining and remaking of Chinese diasporic identities

Sacred Sites, Rituals, and Performances

The conceptual territory of religious tourism is fluid. While recreation and leisure-based motivation and behaviors are evident in religious tourism, this volume reiterates its rootedness in tenets from religious traditions and pilgrimages. Using fresh perspectives on place-stories, rituals, performances, that are central to pilgrimage and sacred sites, essays in this volume explain contemporary expressions of religious tourism and illustrate the dynamic nature of religious tourism as an ecosystem embedded in religious practices, rituals and performances. The explanations will benefit researchers and practioners alike and they can find numerous examples that show the significance of religious tourism for sustainable development of destinations

AN ANALYSIS OF THE VALUES AND SPIRITUALITY PROFILES OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS BY CARNEGIE CLASSIFICATION

The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether there are significant differences in the spirituality and value profiles of the presidents of institutions with differing Carnegie Classification: Associates Institutions, Arts & Sciences Plus Professions four year colleges and universities, and Research universities. This study extends the scope of the growing, but limited research conducted in the past twenty years on spirituality and leadership. This study employed the use of three survey instruments, the Rokeach Value Survey, the Ballard & Bogue Spirituality Assessment, and a demographic questionnaire in an online survey. Three hundred and seventy seven presidents of American colleges and universities were asked to participate in this survey. Sixty presidents completed the survey. Data were compared and studied by gender, type of institution, years of service, academic discipline, private versus public, geographic region, and religious affiliation. The research determined there is little difference in the concept of values and spirituality between presidents of all three major types of institutions studied. The Research university presidents did, however, differ in order of preference on some values

Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies

Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies explores the interaction between religion and nationalism in the Chinese societies of mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. On the one hand, state policies toward religions in these societies are deciphered and their implications for religious freedom and regional stability are evaluated. On the other hand, Chinese Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity, Islam and folk religions are respectively analyzed in terms of their theological, organizational and political responses to the nationalist modernity projects of these states. What is new in this book on Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies is that the Chinese state has strengthened its control over religion to an unprecedented level. In particular, the Chinese state has almost completed its construction of a state religion called Chinese Patriotism. But at the same time, what is also new is the emergence of democratic civil religions in these Chinese societies

Prospects for a postsecular heritage practice : convergences between posthumanism and popular religious practice in Asia

By failing to document popular belief in the supernatural attributes of religious sites and by drawing up conservation management plans that fail to attend to such beliefs, current heritage regimes effectively perform a secular translation of them. I argue that the posthuman turn in the humanities and social sciences, and in particular its openness to forms of agency, vibrancy and vitality in the object world, offers prospects for a kind of heritage practice newly comfortable with the vibrancy that belief in the supernatural lends to the things of popular religion. Focusing on the material heritage of popular religion in Asia—in particular in China and Southeast Asia—attitudes of devotees to the rebuilding of temples and shrines are examined. Practices of rebuilding and restoration come to be seen as a form of worship. While ontological differences between worshipers and heritage practitioners remain, it is possible to be positive about the prospects for a postsecular heritage practice precisely because the rationalist authority of established practice is so under challenge by the counter discourses of posthumanism, the new materialism, and related streams of thought

Digital and Spatial Humanities Mapping: Eurasia-Pacific Early Trade and Belief Linkages

The Eurasia-Pacific is a dynamic region of rapid economic growth, cultural awareness, natural resource exploration, and military buildup. The concept of the region is relatively new, featuring contested vast areas of geo-resource space of numerous cultures and languages. The current findings in anthropology and archaeology and even its more specific subfields such as folklore are important contribution to the understanding of periodic environmental changes and technical innovations were the main forces of transformations in social structures that have determined the mechanisms and levels of cross-cultural trade activity across the region. We have traced early trade and belief linkages across Eurasia-Pacific regions as research in the digital humanities from the Neolithic to early history. It’s about antecedents leading up to an outcome of ‘Silk Roads’ producing a dynamic time map. Recently demonstrating digital and spatial humanities mapping, the Atlas of Maritime Buddhism research project was displayed as visualized 3D virtual exhibitions in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Buddhist artifacts and archaeological sites were presented as integrated narratives for the public to explore. Viewers witnessed accumulated researched data for the spreading linkages of Buddhism from South Asia to Korea through the seaports of Southeast Asia

The Performance Practice of Buddhist Baiqi in Contemporary Taiwan

The baiqi (Buddhist percussive instruments), also known as faqi (dharma instruments), are mentioned in the Chinese Buddhist scriptures under many different terms: jianzhi, jiandi, jianzhui, or jianchi. The original function of baiqi in earlier monastic life was to gather people or to call an assembly. With the completion of monasticism and monastic institutions, baiqi have become multifunctional in monasteries, and many baiqi instruments have been developed for different monastic applications. In contemporary Buddhist monasteries in Taiwan, baiqi are used, on the one hand, to mark the time throughout the day, signal the beginning and end of monastic daily activities, and regulate the monastic order; and on the other hand, baiqi are indispensable to the musical practices of all Buddhist rituals, where they are used to accompany fanbai (Buddhist liturgical chants) and to articulate the whole ritual process. This study investigates multiple facets of Buddhist baiqi in their performance practice, function, application, notation, and transmission, exploring the interaction between baiqi and fanbai, baiqi and the practitioner, baiqi and the monastic space, and baiqi and various Buddhist contexts. I draw upon ideas from performance theory as it concerns different disciplines, but I maintain a sharper focus on the musicological dimension of performance practice when analyzing, interpreting, and explaining the performance and music of baiqi in terms of the monastic lifestyle and its rituals. The study not only uncovers the musical system of baiqi, but also encapsulates various issues of performed identity, social interaction, performer/audience, associated behaviors, the musical construction of space, and transmission